Morphology: How Words Work

What is a morpheme? A morpheme is the smallest sequence of phonemes which carry meaning. In other words, they are the smallest meaningful units in language. Morphemes can be classified several ways. An open morpheme class is a lexical category to which new items can be added such as nouns, verbs and adjectives. Theses words can vary in form. A closed morphemeclass rarely develops new items. They are invariant in form. Conjunctions, determiners and prepositions are in this category. Morphemes can be even further classified. Some morphemes (free) are freestanding words such as to, the, cat, and table. Other morphemes (bound) are not full words but they still carry meaning such as the suffix -ing. Bound morphemes are then further subdivided in include derivational and inflectional morphemes. Derivational morphemes often change the part of speech of a word or significantly alter the meaning of the word within the lexical category. They can be prefixes or suffixes. For example, happy (adjective) to happiness (noun) with the derivational suffix -ness. Inflectional morphemes indicate certain types of meaning such as number, tense, and comparative. They are currently all suffixes.

Morphology Trees

Words combine in a hierarchy. The stem provides the word's core lexical meaning. Prefixes/suffixes attach themselves to the stem one at time. Derivational morphemes always attach before inflectional morphemes. For example, we say "highnesses" as opposed to "highesness." A word develops in order of its morpheme combinations. Morphology trees illustrate this process.

Filling the Lexical Gap

People invent new words frequently. Some may do so because there is no word to express an idea or they don't know/can't remember it. Others just prefer to make up words! English speakers use a variety of processes to create new words. The following is a brief description of how words are formed.

Combining Processescompounding: two free morphemes put together Examples: chatroom, username, doubleclickaffixation: attaching a bound morpheme to beginning, middle, or end of an already existing word.Examples: reboot, unfriend, absofreakinglutely, hacker, disketteShortening Processesalphabetism: a word is formed from the initials of the phrase and is thus pronounced as the resulting sequence of letters Examples: CPU (Central Processing Unit), URL (Universal Resource Locator)acronymy: when groups of words are shortening to initials and then pronounced as if the initials were letters in a wordExamples: ROM (Read Only Memory), RAM (Random Access Memory)clipping: when a word loses an element either before or after the root or baseExamples: net (Internet), cell (cellular)backformation: a new word is formed by removing an affix from a word to form a word that has never existedExamples: defrag [fragment (from fragmentation) + de- = defragment to defrag]

Other Processesblending: created by joining two or more words where one word is clippedExample: smog (smoke + fog), motel (motor + hotel)shifting: when a word form used in one part of speech moves into another Example: e-mail (noun) I received the e-mail. e-mail (verb) Please e-mail me the spreadsheet.reanalysis: to redistribute the sound of a morpheme to create a new word Example: hone in (instead of home in), duck tape (duct tape)reduplication: a new word is formed by repeating a morpheme or slightly altering initial consonants/vowelsExample: mama, boo-boo, hokey-pokey, flip-flop